America by Robert Goodwin

This book’s full title is America; The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493 to 1898. This is a book that I got from Ben McNally’s Book Shop on Bay. I always find intriguing books when I visit this shop. And this book was certainly that.

I knew a bit about the Spanish in North America, because I do read history, but I did not know the full story. I knew that Spain was in the southern states (Texas to California). I knew that Mexico won their independence from Spain (around 8121). I knew the early history of Texas and also that the US took land from Mexico in the Mexico-American war (around 1846). I did not really know how Spain settled into this land. This gives a very good and full story of this adventure into North America by the Spanish. It is quite a story and it is told well.

There is a good overview of the book on Kirkus. J.H. Elliott on New York Review of Books magazine lets you read the first part of a good review. David Steinberg on the Albuquerque Journal writes about this book and another popular book on Spanish North America called El Norte by Carrie Gibson. This was not the only book on Spain by Goodwin, he also wrote Spain: The Centre of the World, 1519–1682 and this has a review on the Spectator. There are some reviews also on Amazon (the USA site). It is interesting that for Amazon, you have to have purchased the book through them to be able to write a review.

There is little I can find online about the author. There is a bit of a biography on him at Macmillan Publishers. The basic same information is at Bloomsbury. At Thrift Books they list books by Robert Goodwin. Also, Robert Goodwin wrote an article on Five Books about the best books on Rewriting America. Robert Goodwin talks about himself on The Viney Agency.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.